CL&P wins approval for $218 million project

Rob Varnon

Updated 9:35 pm, Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Connecticut Light & Power won approval for a $218 million transmission project, which won't start construction until Massachusetts, Rhode Island and a federal agency all provide their consent.

CL&P with National Grid is building a 75-mile, 345-kilovolt transmission line from northeast Connecticut through parts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The Connecticut portion will stretch 37 miles and run through 11 towns.

Last week, the Connecticut Siting Council approved the plan to build concluding it provided economic benefits and improved system reliability.

Shares of CL&P's parent company, Northeast Utilities, lost 21 cents to close at $39 in New York trading.

Frank Poirot, an NU spokesman, said the project in Connecticut cannot stand alone and won't be built unless Rhode Island and Massachusetts regulators approve the other 38 miles and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers also signs off on it.

"This has a big benefit for the southern portion of New England," Poirot said and improving the transmission system will allow Fairfield County residents to access power from newer plants in the eastern portion of Connecticut during the summer, when electricity use peaks.

Poirot said the company is not promising lower energy prices, but does expect this project and others to help make the state's energy market more competitive nationally.

Connecticut residents and businesses pay some of the highest prices in the nation for electricity, according to U.S. Department of Energy surveys.

But NU and other companies maintain that improving transmission and distribution systems will allow the region to tap into cheaper power sources.

While tapping lower cost, most efficient generating sources could lower some of the costs associated with electricity, the cost of building new transmission, along with a built in profit margin will be rolled into customers bills across New England.

ISO New England, which operates the region's grid, will review the project and decide how to divide up the costs among the states' residents.

It's unclear what the total cost of this project is as estimates were not immediately available Tuesday for the Rhode Island and Massachusetts sections.

The last upgrade of this magnitude was a 69-mile Middletown-Norwalk transmission line that CL&P and United Illuminating built in 2008 for nearly $1 billion. To be sure, the job included 24 miles of underground lines running through some of the most expensive property in the nation.

And that project faced a lot of opposition amid health, environmental and economic concerns.

Poirot said the company isn't seeing much opposition this time around.

"One of the lessons we learned was to do a more comprehensive effort of communicating with customers and local leaders living along the route," Poirot said. "We've been talking to them for three years."